Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV

Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages

Overview

Overview

Catalogue and scholarly consideration of these vital manuscripts.

Following her vital cataloguing of the surviving 200+ manuscripts of the Historia Regum Britanniein Volume III, Julia Crick has been able in Volume IV to present the information which the manuscripts contain both about the textual development of Geoffrey's History and about its circulation and audience. Crick begins by exploring the evidence for grouping the manuscripts. External evidence such as associated texts found frequently with the Historiais compared with the internal evidence of textual disruption, the notorious dedications, rubrication and trial passages collated from each manuscript. This information forms the basis for an account of the chronology and geography of the circulation of the work as a whole, which in turn sheds light on the audience of the Historia, their taste in reading, and their status.JULIA CRICKis a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Arthurian Boydell & Brewer have become the Arthurian publishers par excellence, not simply for their excellent secondary material on the once and future king, but for their commitment to the publication of a largely Cambridge-based inquiry into the primeval sources of the Arthurian story. ENGLISH STUDIES [J.D. Burnley] Following the cataloguing of the 200 surviving manuscripts of Geoffrey's HistoriaJulia Crick sets out to assess what these reveal about the textual development of the work and about its circulation and audience. Her meticulous and scholarly approach prises out information which will prove invaluable to all students of the 12th century.

Reviews

Boydell & Brewer have become the Arthurian publishers par excellence, not simply for their excellent secondary material on the once and future king, but for their commitment to the publication of a largely Cambridge-based inquiry into the primeval sources of the Arthurian story. ENGLISH STUDIES [J.D. Burnley] Elegant digest and interpretation of the data presented, manuscript by manuscript, in [her] Summary Catalogue.It is not just students of the Historia that will turn time and time again to this book, but it will be a useful starting-point for identifying basic mss in so many other fields... Julia Crick has meticulously paved the way [for an established text] with her novel method of approach and exact scholarship, and all students of the 12th century are very much in her debt... clear and careful presentation of the material in [a] most attractive volume. BULLETIN CODICOLOGIQUE This useful book For the foreseeable future, any scholar working with manuscripts of the Historia will need to have Dr Crick's assessment available in full. REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES